When you hand me a handle-less teacup
with blue porcelain flowers,
I think of my mother,
saying science believed
in no such thing as a blue flower,
so if I found one, I’d be famous.
I looked for years, certain
I’d seen one, wondering
if science had heard of bluebells.
In the end, I thought blue
must be like apples--
who could say if apple in my mouth,
tasted apple to others?
You dip a wrought-iron spoon
into the cup--
Red currants…want some?
I expect sweet,
but get Wisconsin summer breeze
through my Norwegian grandma’s clapboard house,
white-petal-clouds in a robin-egg-sky,
a hedge higher than my head,
where fat currants sit red-jeweling
among leprechaun leaves,
my tongue pressing the berries—
juice zapping electric
red, the only flavor
tasting only of itself.
I was a girl then,
couldn’t see over the hedge,
or dreamI’d ever
taste such juice again.